


Driving Thor Crazy

by toodlepip



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies), Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Crack, Loki Does What He Wants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 10:44:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1302028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toodlepip/pseuds/toodlepip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki sees Tom Hiddleston on Top Gear. He decides he could do better and sets out to prove it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Driving Thor Crazy

 

Loki didn’t think of himself as a habitually jealous man. All the same, he’d have been happier if Thor hadn’t plopped himself down on Loki’s sofa and switched on BBC Worldwide. As it happened, they caught the tail-end of _Top Gear_.

 “Look, brother!” said Thor enthusiastically. “Your Midgardian avatar has become a charioteer!”

They watched in silence for a few minutes. It was true: Tom Hiddleston was on TV. The lanky actor bearing Loki’s face exchanged pleasantries with the show's host, sat in what the show explained was a ‘reasonably-priced car’ and smiled good-naturedly as he learned the race time he'd achieved on the _Top Gear_ racetrack: remarkably slow, it turned out. Right at the bottom of the board.

Loki’s frown surfaced.

Thor went to the kitchen and fetched some more beer. It made no difference.

“It is of no consequence,” Thor explained. “It is but a charade, brother. And he is not _you_.”

Loki took a swig. “They mock me,” he hissed, so quietly that Thor barely heard him.

Thor knocked back his drink, crumpled the can and tossed it into a corner. Then he turned earnestly to his brother. “You could do better,” he told Loki. “I know that you could.”

His brother stared for a long moment at a patch of condensation. At length, a mirthless smile formed on his face. “Then we will just have to prove it, brother mine...”

 

* * *

 

It turned out to be surprisingly easy for a god to get himself onto the _Top Gear_ schedule. Loki had been ready to infiltrate and if necessary intimidate, but as it turned out, they’d folded at first contact. Thor had – well, Stark had; Thor never really grasped 20 th-century technologies, let alone 21st – simply asked, and an enthusiastic member of the production staff had almost-but-not-quite talked _him_ into appearing too.

It wasn’t until a week before filming that it occurred to them that Loki couldn’t actually drive. 

“I had no need for a car,” Loki explained reasonably. “I am a god. I have people for that.”

“Yet you can,” said Thor. “I have seen you.”

“Yes, Thor. I drive a _spaceship_ ,” said Loki.

It occurred to Thor to wonder whether he’d made a mistake. Still, they were committed now...

He speed-dialed Stark. “My brother is required to drive,” he informed him.

“What?” Good answer. Stark was distracted. Probably under a car or over 10,000 feet. Could be either.

“He has a race. Next week. In what is known as a ‘reasonably priced car’. We must ensure his success!”

“Uh. Okay, Achilles, got it. Where’s the race?”

“... England?”

“Great. So, stick shift. I’ll put Jarvis on it. Gotta go, hero, I’ve got company and they’re waving AK-47s.”

So much for the car maintenance hypothesis. Even so, three minutes after putting the phone down, it rang. Jarvis had booked lessons. Loki outfitted himself in Midgardian jacket and jeans and headed out with a slightly smug air for his first try. Thor dozed off on the sofa.

He was awoken an hour later by six foot odd of pissed-off Norse god huffily throwing himself down. “What’s wrong?”

Loki drew himself into the corner of the couch like a wounded spider, all legs, spines and carapace. “They made me drive a _Peugeot_ ,” he spat.

“So?”

“I _stalled_ it.”

“What?” said Thor, visions of horses and stables dancing in his head.

“The Peugeot does not wish to obey my commands. It stops. It chokes. It wishes to be cosseted like a child. I do not like it.”

Thor thought about nodding, then he thought about apologising, then he thought about switching on the television, until he remembered what had started this whole episode. Then he said, “Want a beer?”

 

* * *

 

Stark laughed himself into fits when Thor told him about the Peugeot 106. Even Natasha smiled a little, when Loki slunk back into the kitchen after his second driving lesson, hair mussed up on the top where Loki’s head touched the roof.

“Did you visit the stalls today, brother?

“No!” Pause. “Only twice. And in truth... it was the cat lady’s fault.”

Sometimes, they reflected, it was best to let the past bury its dead. Thor just pulled open the fridge door and wordlessly handed Loki another beer.

 

* * *

 

 

Finally, they reached the eve of the event. They discussed tactics in flight. To put it another way, Stark gave a lecture about hammerheads, gambons and something called a chicago, no relation to the city, while Loki ate olives and stared out of the window. Thor watched in-flight cartoons. Every now and then, Thor guffawed and Stark lost his place. He gave in when Loki’s eyes drifted closed. 

“Sleep well, sweet prince,” misquoted Stark.

Loki said, eyes still closed, “I tire of your plots and strategems. I will simply drive.”

Thor looked over at them and peeled one earbud away. “Loki!” he bellowed good-naturedly. “Now that you are at peace, I would ask a boon.”

Loki snuggled into his seat, stretching his crossed legs out and pulling the airline blanket up to his chin. “Speak on, brother mine. Well do I know that no force can still your sanctimonious tongue.”

“I would ask only this: it is no contest and you are no gladiator, so you need not extinguish the competition. Do nothing that attracts the mortals’ attention. Please, brother, do not damage them.”

“That’s three requests, brother. I think I can promise you that I shall obey.... at least two.”

The team didn’t attend the filming, and when Loki came back that evening he was tight-lipped and unwilling to volunteer information. In fact, he slept for two days straight, coming down for breakfast at past ten on departure day and hissing, “What _do_ you think you’re wearing, brother?” 

Thor gazed down at his ‘I <3 London’ t-shirt and cargo pants in obvious confusion. “These are Midgardian clothes, brother. You wear them too.”

“Mine do not exhibit mawkish sentimentality! What ruler wears his heart on his chest?” Loki attacked a plate of baked beans on toast as though they had done him permanent, irrevocable harm. Knives, Thor reflected, were Loki’s skill. Even so, he had an uneasy feeling that Midgardian table manners frowned on stabbing, even if the victims were vegetables.

* * *

 

The team waited almost three weeks before the episode aired. By mutual consent, nobody mentioned the subject in Loki’s hearing. Jarvis arranged timings with the other Avengers, though, and on broadcast day, Stark ordered takeout and the team settled down to watch.

It began reasonably well. Somehow, Loki had been persuaded not to wear his leathers; he looked almost human, if distinctly sinister. Clarkson introduced him to the studio audience as “Asgard’s hot new gift to the New York skyscraper renovation industry,” at which Loki actually managed a smile, albeit one which suggested that he was wondering what Clarkson would look like if you cut his arms off and then demanded that he draw an isometric sketch of a Bugatti Veyron. They managed a little desultory chitchat: 

“So, _do_ you drive a spaceship?”

“Yes, on occasion I do. I don’t really have a favourite, though. We have so many.”

“Really? Does your family collect them?”

“They are the spoils of battle. We take them from our vanquished enemies. Don’t look like that. The dead have no need of interstellar transport.”

“No... No, I can see that. And do you drive a car?”

“I do. It is proper for a visitor to adopt the customs of the host, is it not?”

“Right. And which car do you drive?”

Loki-on-screen stiffened. “It is a Peugeot 106,” he said reluctantly.

Clarkson grinned. “Snappy,” he said. “So, you all want to see how Loki did?”

And there followed two of the most excruciating minutes of television that the Avengers had ever seen, as Loki stalled (twice), drove the car onto the grass, skidded sideways at the gambon and somehow managed to press the brake instead of the accelerator on the final stretch.

“How do you think you did?” Clarkson said.

“Badly,” said Loki-on-screen. “Tell me. And then I will offer you two arguments in my defence.”

“Loki Odinson,” said Clarkson, “You did it in one minute... fifty... three seconds.” And he plonked Loki’s name right under Tom Hiddleston’s on the Top Gear speed board.

Loki smiled like a snake. “Two points I promised, and two points you shall have. The first is this: in Asgard as in America, we drive on the other side of the road. The second, perhaps more relevant to your wellbeing, is this: your car is slow and surly. Even your Stig could do the run faster. Let me prove it to you: I will show you how Asgardian seidrmen race.”

Clarkson turned to face the camera. “Ordinarily, we don’t believe in do-overs here on Top Gear. But Loki presented a number of excellent arguments on the spot, including both of the above and a third argument that may or may not have begun with the words ‘Quail, brief mortals’, and in consultation with the producers...” the camera cut to footage of a Top Gear producer, half-strangled in Loki’s grasp, feet dangling off the floor, clipboard akimbo, “...we decided that the prince had an excellent point. Let’s show you Loki’s second lap.”

They had, no doubt, been expecting Loki to snap his fingers and call in another means of transport. But first, he called to the Stig, Top Gear’s anonymous test-driver, perpetually clad in white jumpsuit and opaque helmet. Loki conversed earnestly with the man in a low voice, nodding occasionally, hands steepled before him. They wandered together towards the start of the track. There was a brief flash of green light as Loki-on-screen brought his palms together, and then three things happened at once.

The Stig bent down and Loki-on-screen fell towards him. The Stig straightened – and then, Loki-on-screen somehow perched on his broad shoulders, the Stig began to run at an utterly impossible speed. His shoes sparked against the road. His legs blurred. Loki held on to the Stig’s helmet with one arm and punched the air cheerfully with the other, whooping. The wind whipped through Loki's hair so that it streamed out behind him. As they navigated Chicago the camera caught a close-up of the Stig’s helmet under Loki's hand: it was glowing with a very faint blue halo.

Steve, watching the show from the table, sighed. “You did it again, didn’t you? I thought you said you weren’t going to do the possession thing again.”

“Ssh,” said Loki-in-New-York. “I’m watching.” In fact there wasn’t much left to see. As the Stig completed his lap, Loki leapt, cat-like, from his shoulders, and touched his hand to the man’s shoulder. No doubt he was revoking his possession of the man’s psyche.

“Was he injured?” asked Thor. “You promised you weren’t going to damage them.”

“I healed him,” said Loki-in-New-York, slightly smugly.

The show cut back to the studio. “Never seen anyone do that before,” said Clarkson, in an _entirely_ different tone of voice.

Loki made a self-deprecating gesture. “It is but a gift,” he explained.

“Impressive... I think. Loki Odinson; you did the lap in one.. minute... and … 36 seconds, putting you simultaneously at the bottom and the top of the leaderboard. Congratulations.”

Loki-on-screen smiled.

 

* * *

 

Thor turned off the television. “Brother,” he said plaintively. “You _promised_.”

“I did,” said Loki. “I promised you not to extinguish the competition, and I did not. As I promised: anyone can beat my score in their reasonably priced car. And I promised you not to damage them, and I did not. The Stig is as good as new. Maybe better. I did a bit of protective maintenance.”

“But you _rode_ their _racing-driver_ , brother! That is not a thing that one forgets!”

“I agree that they will not forget me. I promised that I would obey at least two of your three requests, and so I did. But consider this, Thor,” and Loki tossed his hair back, exposing the long, flawless curve of his neck, “Were they ever likely to forget me? Me, the supervillain, the destroyer of New York, the Prince of Lies... the _Star_ in the _Reasonably Priced Car_?”

Thor sighed. “Brother.... “ He shook his head, stood up, went to the kitchen and returned. “I know not what to say, brother. So here you are. Have a beer.”

**Author's Note:**

> First Avengers fic, first Ao3 fic. Hope it makes someone smile. I've had this image stuck in my head since the episode of Top Gear with Tom Hiddleston aired :-/


End file.
